


Wonderland

by GalekhXigisi



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Canon Related, Canonical Character Death, Gen, I'll Die By My Own Sword, Light Angst, Minor Michelle Jones/Ned Leeds/Peter Parker, Minor Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Minor Ned Leeds/Peter Parker, Ned Leeds is a Good Bro, Not Beta Read, Teen Peter Parker, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Trans Peter Parker, Wings, no beta we die like a man
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 07:39:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18890164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GalekhXigisi/pseuds/GalekhXigisi
Summary: Peter's wings grow in late.





	Wonderland

His nails are chewed down to the quick and his eyes are blotchy and red. The echoes of his parents fighting in the background sound through his head louder than it normally did. Maybe it’s because  _ he _ was the issue this time. He was why they were fighting. His wings hadn’t grown in,  _ wouldn’t _ grow in. He didn’t have the bones to start them nor the air pouches to carry them. People could be born without the pockets and still get wings, yes, but their wings always came in early. Without the bones there to begin the wings, there was the knowing diagnosis from his yearly check-up that every human dreaded to hear. 

 

_ “I’ll be blunt about this because there’s no possible way not to be, kiddo. You’re not getting them wings you wanted. Or any at all, for that matter.” _ The doctor was sure not to sugarcoat it. After all, how do you sugarcoat telling a child that their life would become a living Hell and that they are the once-a-century exception to the rule of  _ everyone gets their wings with patience? _ It’s simple: You can’t. You can’t just sugarcoat something so life alternating. There went a lot of his dreams out the window just as was. 

 

He wasn’t like soldiers who could say their wings were injured during wars or heroes that had enough scars and ruffled feathers that they didn’t have to say anything. He wasn’t like Tony Stark who could do both of those. His wings had been small to begin with before getting torn to shreds and his wings got clipped. Only then did the suits begin getting made and he got his title  _ of _ Ironman. He wasn’t like Falcon, who had a genetic mutation that made his wings hard as steel and grow back quicker. He wasn’t like Hawkeye, who could miraculously grow back his wings after they got torn off or something of the likes. He wasn’t like Thor, who housed three sets of golden sings as well as the wings behind his ears that every Asgardian sported. 

 

He folds his body in on itself as the echoes get louder. The clattering noises of glass breaking makes his body flinch from behind the shower curtain to peak out of the tub, eyes wide as he stares at the door where the clinking of his mother’s heels makes him reel back and cower. Her yells are loud from outside the door and his father is throwing plates at the door now, too. The sounds are all loud. They’re all  _ angry. _ It buzzes in his ears as the fear takes its chokehold around him. The accusations of whose fault it was for his lack of wings were, but Peter knows they’re both empty and useless, as both parents had rather large wings that were beautiful and stunning no matter what. 

 

Just as suddenly as the bickering had started, it stopped, the sound of his mother chugging a bottle of liquor filling the hall as his father knowingly guffaws at her. Her voice sounds through, “It’s not my fault and it’s not yours, either. Circle of life, natural selection, babe.” 

 

That statement doesn’t sit right with Peter. It sure as Hell doesn’t a week later when he stands over the corpse of his mother, the woman dressed up all fancy with her hair braided. The box doesn’t look big enough for her, but the child doesn’t comment as he grasps tightly at his uncle's hand. He was an orphan, newly in the legal system while his aunt and uncle fought for custody. They had cleaned the apartment they lived in, were doing their best to get custody and take the precautions to raise a child, especially a wingless one. 

 

He glances over at Aunt May. Her wings are smaller than his parents, glinting a soft brown that matches her dress amazingly. The soft browns turn to comforting wings with gentle edges, fluffier and more for comfort than anything else. Uncle Ben’s are almost the exact same, though his start with black instead of brown, standing much darker and a tad bit bigger. Peter’s uncle tentatively wraps a wing around him, one meant to be comforting bt doing no such thing for the child. 

 

Peter isn’t bitter like he’s seen one of the other kids in his class be after her mother died. Instead, Peter looks forward to the future. After the burial, he looks up at his two remaining family members, softly asking, “What now,” with his brows knit. He takes their words with silent concentration, churning them over and over in his head. 

 

It takes longer to get him pulled into his aunt and uncles’ home than he first suspected, but he gets there, all the same, sitting in his new room  _ \- which used to be the guest room that he always slept in anyway - _ with a smile on his face. He doesn’t grow up bitter. He grows up happily, admiring his friends and their wings. Out of all of his friends to stick around, he sticks with Ned the most, often curled up in the boys’ caramel wings with a content smile gracing his features. He’s so far from being angry about the past event that everything he’s actually happier with how things turned out. He doesn’t know how things would have been if he had stuck around with his parents if the night before their deaths were a sample of his future. 

 

He handles the taunting from Flash and his friends. He handles the orphan jokes before even resorting to doing some on his own. It doesn’t defuse it nor take away the sting, but he likes to think it’s better than letting them revel in the moments where he’s weak and just bursts into tears after a comment or two. Those are rare, yes, but they still happen and Peter hates them more and more as each happens. 

 

Aunt May and Uncle Ben are quick to get his name changed after he says  _ Karen Gwendolyn Parker just doesn’t fit anymore. _ His name gets turned into  _ Peter Benjamin Parker. _ His uncle smiles at him, ruffling his hair. It becomes a joke to call him  _ Ben Number Two _ or  _ Ben Junior. _ He prefers it over any other alternatives. 

 

-

 

Peter frowns as he walks down the street, brows knit and worry peppering at his stomach. He feels nauseous. For some reason, he always does when he comes home so late from Ned’s or the library, but this is so starkly different that he has to pause because the nausea is so strong. It makes his insides turn and shuffle. He presses his palms against the wall, forcing himself to breathe before he does anything else. His lungs protest as he forces himself to calm down. 

 

He feels it before he sees it. It’s quick, a spider pressing it’s tiny fangs into the top of his hand. He glares at it as he flinches. The flinch itself is almost enough as is to throw off the tiny menace that passively glows in the darkness of the alleyway. Peter grimaces as he pulls the spider from his skin, shrugging it off before setting the spider on the ground. “You’re probably going to die soon,” he comments passively, wiping off his hand. He still feels disgustingly sick as he continues his trek back to the apartment. 

 

When he opens the door, he huffs. It’s usually locked when one person is just home, which makes the teenager frown. “Hey, Uncle Ben,” he calls through the room, pulling his key back around his neck, “Aunt May said she’d be working late today.” 

 

He stops in his tracks as he looks around the trashed scene. The couch is overturned, many of the photos knocked down and shattered. Even the old coffee table they had owned since before he was born was broke in half. He’s running through the homes before he can comprehend what in the Hell he’s doing, stomach flopping the instant he runs next to his uncle. 

 

Uncle Ben lays on the floor, chest bleeding harshly as he chokes down some blood. “Ben,” Peter yelps, pulling out his phone as he drops to his knees. “Ben, Ben, hey, it’s me, Peter,” he whimpers. The numbers are dialed faster than he actually realizes what’s going on. Tears already press down his cheeks, burning their way down. 

 

“P-Pete, hey,” the adult mumbles weakly. “Ho-H-H-how was Ned-ed’s?” 

 

“Doesn’t matter,” Peter chokes out, forcing a smile. “What hap-happ-pened, Ben?” 

 

“Robbed,” the other answers simply. “Don’t cry-ry, Pete,” he mumbles, “I’ll be okay.” A comforting wing wraps around him, an attempt to keep the other warm through the choking tears. 

 

_ “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” _

 

“My un-un-uncl-cle was shot,” he chokes out. His smile falls weakly as he quickly lists out his address before the adult can ask. “It was a-a-a robber-ry.” He sniffles. 

 

“Pete,” Ben whispers softly, still forcing a smile. His hand cards through the teenager’s hair, so gentle and full of caring love. 

 

“I-I-I could have stopped this,” Peter chokes as he pushes the phone away from his mouth, “If I’d gotten home earlier-” 

 

Ben interrupts, “You’d be hurt, too, then.” A harsh cough peppers his words, blood dribbling down his chin as he chokes. 

 

“Please, don’t leave me,” Peter whimpers so quietly that even he barely hears it. A sob pulls him from the painful silence that ghosts the room. “Not like Mom and Dad, please.” He begs the other to keep breathing, to  _ stay alive. _ By the time the paramedics arrive, they find the teenager holding the corpse close, the wings slack and cold. They give him a few moments before finally pulling away and calling Aunt May. 

 

The woman holds him close, wings wrapped tightly around him, secure and comforting as can be. She lets him sob against her as they file a police report, lets him hold onto her tight when they leave. THe two get a hotel for the night.  _ “It’s just until the police get done with the apartment,” _ May promises herself, though she knows she’ll be there for at least another day or two than she originally intends. 

 

It’s two days before they return to the apartment. And Peter sleeps with his door shut and locked. It’s not because of what happened, no, he knows better than to just blame shit willy-nilly. It’s because he sleeps in just a shirt and boxers. The shirts are all free from cut cloth, avoiding the lack of wings he housed without a smile. Now, though, he has to frown at it. He slips into one of Aunt May’s large shirts that she usually wore to sleep. It was just a simple, white shirt that wrote  _ I survived my trip to NYC  _ on it with a straw drawing. Holes were cut in the back of it. 

 

He thinks that the spider bite had something to do with it. Aunt May had left early the first night in the motel, which meant when Peter woke up in the morning, no one was there to catch him hanging on the ceiling or the fact that webs were shooting out of his wrists, somehow keeping him attached to the ceiling. He stares at himself in the mirror, watching as the wings slowly slip through the holes of his shirt. They’re much larger than his parents’ were, too big to even expand fully through the room, actually. He has to keep from sobbing as he stares at the faded colors. 

 

“You would’ve been proud of me, right, Uncle Ben?” His question is soft and almost silent. It definitely isn’t heard over the television show his aunt was watching in the other room. He’s thankful for that. It would make for a rather awkward conversation, after all. “Probably would have liked my wings, maybe?” 

 

He would have. Peter knows he would have loved them. He would have loved the way it reflected colors beautifully across the walls, showing off different colors in different lighting. It all looks like gentle browns and reds over the white as he patters his way to sit on his bed. The fading light that shines off of him only enhances the colors more. 

 

It makes his stomach churn to consider the fact that neither his parents nor uncle will be there to see his wings. None of them will  _ ever _ see his wings. THey won’t see the newly created spinners on his wrists or the beautiful webs he leaves after weaving them together as if it were a  _ natural _ thing to do. Something about him changed after the spider bite, more than just his wings. His DNA had knowingly changed just as much as he physically had. Whatever that bite had done, it was for the  _ better. _ His features were sharper, just like his senses. He could pinpoint heartbeats and noises he had never even considered hearing before like the ticking of the clock from one of the older lady’s clock four floors up. 

 

He can also hear his aunt talking, discussing a new apartment with a woman that he suspects may be a real estate agent of some sort. She sounds professional, more so than May, who puts up the same fake, motherly front she always does when she means business, voice sickeningly sweet for anyone close to her. It’s just a block down, but it’s farther than here. He doesn’t know if they’ll move or not, but he knows it’s far from a bad decision at this point. 

 

Maybe, for once, things  _ would _ be okay?

 

-

 

Peter walks along the side of the building, breathing stuttered from behind the homemade mask. It was shifty at best but it was  _ good. _ It was working and that’s all he needed. He needed things to focus all his senses on. Overstimulation had become something painfully common, even at school,  _ especially _ at school. Ned was always quick to notice it. He was quick to attempt to solve it, too. 

 

“This is it,” Peter mumbles to himself as he presses his foot to the top of the building, huffing. He stares down. Why had he picked such a tall building? Why couldn’t he have done something a little shorter? “It’s just a leap of faith. That’s it, that’s all. Ben would have encouraged him to go for it, he  _ knows. _ He’s had these powers for a week, he can use them just fine. 

 

He thrusts himself forward. It’s far from graceful, simply flailing. He must look like he’s attempting suicide, especially as people stop and stare. Someone holds onto their phone, eyes panicked as they pull it out to dial what he suspects is nine-one-one. However, he lets his brows furrow as he forces himself into a somewhat graceful position, something more like the graceful skydiving he had seen on YouTube or Aunt May had shown him from Facebook. He sticks his arm up, middle and ring finger held in, wrists held out. He knew that it was far from good looking and probably wasn’t the best position to shoot from, but he does it all the same. 

 

The webbing connects, jerking him up. He slings through the night, eyes wide and amazement clear. Happiness radiates through him as he turns to swing backward. It’s more of an accidental rookie thing to do but it comes out gracefully as he flits through the night, tossing and turning, flipping happily. He lets his head clear and his instincts take over. 

 

By the end of the night, he has a title in the news, people questioning the webbing appearing around Queens and the question of  _ who is this suited stray? Are they a friend or foe? _ He’s far from surprised when he listens to Ned clambering on about it in the morning, full of excitement he hadn’t seen in a while. 

 

However, Peter has to halt that, brows knit. “Hey, Ned,” he supplies, jerking the boys' attention to himself during gym. The other boys’ feathers ruffle in surprise. “Uncle… Uncle Bens’ funeral is this Saturday,” he supplies. 

 

Ned seems to take the hint instantly. “I’ll be there, Peter. So will my moms. We’re here for you and May.” His mocha wing tentatively wraps around the other, warm as can be beneath the sheet of comfort. It makes the spiderlings’ own wings ruffle from within their pockets at the contact, making his brows knit together as he leans into the touch. “How’re you holding up, anyway?” 

 

Peter hums at the soft distraction, head turning to address the other, “Better than I thought I would be, honestly. I thought I would be breaking down or something like that, but I’m actually doing… okay, I think.” He’s not doing his best, far from it, but he’s not shattering beneath the world like he had when he was a kid. He was still mourning his second fatherly figure without remorse for his own mental being. It’s not as bad as it could be. 

 

“Really?” 

 

“I mean, I’m still crying about it a lot. It hadn’t even been a full week and he’s part of a murder investigation, too, so there are not that many escape routes from it. I thought Aunt May was even considering moving out so that we don’t have to stay there.” 

 

Ned shakes his head. “No, I mean  _ you, _ not May. I know how she’s taking it, she’s been talking to my moms a lot.” 

 

The spiderling huffs passively. Ned had been there for all of his panic attacks as of late, whether it be because he was on the phone or because he was physically there. He had been  _ there, _ even at two in the morning when he should’ve been dead asleep. He had come over to his house at eleven at night because Peter couldn’t calm down and Aunt May was still at work. He needed touch to ground him and the boy had been the solution.

 

“I really don’t know. I told you, I’m not breaking down or struggling as much as I thought I would be, but I’m really not doing my best, either.” He shrugs halfheartedly, silently dismissing the subject as he curls closer to Ned’s wing, face getting buried in his shoulder. He’s sort of tempted to start bawling then and there about it once again but the soft feathers ground him enough that he can’t find it in him to have the energy to do so. He becomes so mentally drained within a few moments that it kind of just makes him feel sick to his stomach. 

 

Things carry on like that for a month and a half. Peter does something dumb and daring, something that he never would have considered beforehand. Ned finds a way to bring it up later on because  _ Spider-Man is so cool, dude. _ Peter indulges his best friend as much as he can. He loves watching the others’ eyes light up and wings flutter as he gushes about the hero he currently houses a crush on and Peter doesn’t dare pry that away. He doesn’t spill his secret nor say much about it in general. He just listens with a loving smile. 

 

Peter keeps on adventuring, keeps swinging through the night, webbing up bad guys, saving people, doing whatever comes to his mind as he presses on for the night. He lives a double life and it doesn’t stand as an issue for him. He doesn’t need to sleep as much anymore, not with his senses and dialed up, spot on anxiety that he had dubbed his  _ Spidey Senses, _ even if it was more to himself than anything else. That’s all it was to the teenager, just something there to remind him to watch out. He knows that it’s an actual thing that he guesses spiders much have, but he can’t exactly dub it as  _ hyper-aware spider senses, _ that was too big of a mouthful and got annoying pretty quickly. 

 

He improvises with it, even considers coining the phrase just so he can get some extra money off of it, but pauses after realizing that that’s actually a rather pointless idea, as he wasn’t sure anyone ever really realizes his horrible senses and didn't count them as simply amazing reflexes. 

 

-

 

Peter documents his trip out of the US to fight with Captain America. He’s not exactly sure where he stands on the Accords, but he has no way to contact the Captain if he feels any differently. He swears up and down that Bucky was one of the coolest people he had ever met, metal arm and wing amazing him as he mused over them before getting tossed around. His own wings are useless, held deep inside their pockets. He wasn’t sloppy with them, no, he was well versed in how to fly, but there was something about actually using them that still hadn’t sat right with him. 

 

_ “Peter Benjamin Parker,” Tony Stark muses to the teenager with a cocky smirk as he files the other, “only wingless kid alive as of current, technically an orphan, got a hot aunt, also uses the alias Spider-man. You’ve been a lot of scientists’ little experiment, too, haven’t you? I read up on you a lot.”  _

 

It doesn’t exactly stick right with Peter, especially when he returns home. He hides the secret until Ned finds out, smiling widely and huffing more and more, happiness filling him to the brim. The boy takes up being  _ man in the chair _ without any sort of hesitation in the least. He’s practically ecstatic to hack his way through Stark’s technology, taking off the baby monitor with a triumphant smirk. 

 

“Karen,” Peter asks while he sits at one of the playgrounds, perched atop one of the dome monkey-bar contraptions that he’s not actually sure what the name of it is. 

 

The Ai responds,  _ “Yes, Peter?” _

 

“Is… There any way to open the back of the suit? So I have my wings out and stuff?” 

 

_ “There is, yes. Would you like me to open it now?” _

 

“Yes, please.” 

 

With his wings slitting through the slots elegantly, he’s finally given the chance to open his wings, something so rare that he’s beyond happy to just sit there and revel in the feeling like a child would with finally learning to fly. He’s messy with his movements, yes, but the excitement is something pure that no one could dare pry from him, not now. Not when things were just in his grasp. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo does anyone wanna fuckin beta read my shit? Like, I've got no idea how to set that shit up but I'm ready to learn and I need someone to beta my shit, blease

**Author's Note:**

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